The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Focusing on town entrance, transit center and Matterhorn
By Kendra Walker
The Mt. Crested Butte town council would like to add more holiday cheer to the town and plans to pursue installing extra lighting in certain high traffic areas for the winter seasons moving forward.
Earlier this year, the town issued a request for proposals for holiday lighting for the upcoming season, and selected Decorate CB out of seven applicants. “Decorate CB is a locally based firm, offering valuable knowledge of regional snow loads and providing timely responses to issues and repairs,” said parks supervisor Addison Ives in a memo to the council. “They also conduct regular inspections throughout the season, comply with Dark Sky lighting standards and are recognized for their strong reputation and creative approach.”
The town is working on developing a three-year contract, and Decorate CB presented two different options for the town’s various sites, including the town entrance trees, transit center trees, Matterhorn Lot (formerly known as Rasta Lot) trees and restrooms building, bus turnaround trees near town hall, and the trees at town hall. Town staff asked the town council for guidance during their August 5 meeting.
Option A would stick closer to the town’s current budget of $30,000 with 50% “tip wrap” lighting at the town’s selected sites, and Option B would increase the current budget to $50,000 with 100% “nature wrap” lighting of the trees at the town entrance and transit center while other sites stay at the 50% tip wrap lighting.
“The nature wrap is really the premium tree wrap. Lights hit every branch, it is a fully lit tree,” said Decorate CB’s Darcie Perkins. “The tip wrap is a much more scattered look but we still want it to look very natural.”
“There is some play room in there if we’re not seeing exactly what we want to see,” said Ives, explaining that they could take away the lighting of certain areas, such as at town hall and the bus turnaround, and redistribute them to higher trafficked parts of the town.
Council member Steve Morris strongly favored going big with the lights, and preferred doubling or even tripling the budget. “I would love to see if we amp this up a bit and see if the council has an appetite for a higher budget on this project. When the economy lags is when we need to start doubling down on these types of things, and my expectation would be that engagement and social likes would go up. I think $50k still comes up short. For me this is about crafting a guest experience that is nicer than other places.”
The rest of the council liked the idea of focusing on the entrance to town, the transit center and the Matterhorn Lot, and seeing if that could help redistribute the overall cost. “It seems like the best bang for the buck is the base area for tourism and photo taking purposes,” said mayor Nicholas Kempin. “It seems like we should maximize the base area where the tourists are and walking around.”
“If it comes down to it cost-wise, we can move lights from town hall and the bus turnaround and focus on the entrance and base area,” said town manager Carlos Velado. “We can see if we can get something pretty close to the budget.”
“I’m in the $30,000-$50,000 range,” said council member Bruce Nation. “I don’t know that we have to spend a huge amount of money to make something look nice. I feel weird as a government organization being the ones making things festive. It shouldn’t only be us making the decorating happening.”
The council asked Perkins and town staff to work on a new quote that eliminates lights from town hall and the bus turnaround to potentially be able to add more of the premium lights to the town entrance, base area and Matterhorn Lot.
